: Hi Rob;

: The attack you are making and the criticisms you forward smack of total
: intolerance. You decide what constitutes a good design, what form is
: artistic, what building materials are acceptable, what surface finish is
: appropriate, what a reasonable selling price is, what buying motivations
: are important, what intended uses of the product are OK, and then you
: expect, or rather DEMAND, that your personal opinions be followed to the
: letter. You remind me of the Democratic National Party . . .

: Who the heck are you? You claim artistic credentials (fine arts degree,
: "You want fries with that?" ), and freely admit you can't
: even sharpen a plane iron - That's not much background for a boat
: designer/builder, IMHO. I built your Georgian Bay, and found you
: designed-in irregular form spacing to keep the hull fair, and provided
: generally dated (1992) building techniques in your plans. It is an
: inherently good overall plan, mind you, and produces a very nice kayak,
: but it is not a benchmark to which all other designs must be compared, and
: particularly, was essentially 9 years out of date as received. I ended up
: incorporating Vaclav, Greenley, Shade, and other design improvements to
: bring it up to modern kayak construction standards. So again I ask,
: "Who are you to criticize a fellow designer/builder's success and
: methods?"

: Best Regards, Spidey

This is a new experience for me. I’ve never knowingly been called an asshole by someone I’ve never met before. We become now, these disembodied words on a picture screen. Please, lets give each other a little more respect that our motives are good since we are here because of our love of boats and boat building.

I dictate nothing. I’m simply expressing my opinion. My intent is not to threaten your ideas, but to expand them.

My initial response in this line of posts was to the comments that the boats in question were the “Pinnacle of canoes” and “ a new high-water mark”.

I don’t agree with that assessment. I don’t expect you to think my option negates yours because I’m a professional builder. I hope you will give my arugments some thought because of it. My hope was to promote some debate to explore ideas of critical thinking on why we build boats, how their purpose defines their making, and what part ornament should play.

My intention is not to run Phil’s work down but to explain why I don’t think it is “the Pinnacle of canoes” and “a new high water mark”.

I would never think of criticizing anyone’s work that doesn’t assume to climb the Mt. Everest of a field. To be honest, I don’t know if Phil presumes this lofty place for his work, but comments like “museum grade” and a price tag of $25,000 for a canoe make it inevitable.
And, people on this board are suggesting that’s where it belongs.

I devour and savor visual images the way people devour and savor food. I’m constantly looking for the rich complex beauty of a new visual banquet.

When I hear everyone raving about this object, that is “the Pinnacle” and “a new watermark” and it costs 10 times the going rate, I think wow!, this is going to be great! I’m going to see something new! I’m really going to learn something.

And when “I” see it, it impresses me as much as a Ford Escort, with a candy apple paint job and leopard skin seat covers. Hey, looks good, nice work sure, but if you grew up in Detroit, and spent your teens hanging out on Woodward Ave. on summer nights and going to every Auto Show drooling over the concept cars, this one doesn’t live up to the hype.

Some spoke of a belief in the idea of “Form Follows Function”. I ascribe to this idea. I believe if an object is not function driven then the form will be weak.

This idea originates in the function driven form of things in nature, which are our basis of ideas of beauty.

The beauty of what our minds can design flourishes within the natural limitations placed on an object, it’s use, design/beauty which will appeal/sell the object, and the balance of time to build verses fair market price for others of its kind.

I pointed out, several times in my posts, what I thought was a shining example of Craftsmanship, design and execution in the work of Jerry Stelmok’s canoes. I guess no one here is familiar with his boats. One of his canoes was on the other side of the tent from Phil’s at last year’s WoodenBoat Show. When I looked at Jerry’s boat after looking at Phil’s I had a greater appreciation for the simple beauty of Jerry's canoe.

When a craftsman follows the idea of “Form Follows Function” there are natural perimeters that guide the design and ornament to success without the kind of awareness of design principles, visual weights and a whole Pandora’s box of aesthetic judgment required to pull off the functionless idea driven form of something aspiring to notions of art.

The is a lot more to seeing than just looking. Geometric shapes, color, shade, contrast and patterns have tremendous visual weight. By visual weight I mean your eyes are uncontrollably attacked to them.

Imagine a picture of a sky with clouds. Then I put a circle or sphere in there. Bang, your eyes can’t help but go to the sphere. Then across from the sphere I put a picture of a person’s head. Bang, you eyes can’t resist going to the head, because visual recognition of human features have the most visual weight of all (all things being equal in other values of color, contrast, etc.). The visual weights of elements in a design composition are like the lions and tigers of a lion tamer’s act. If you can’t control them they’ll bite you in the ass.

I learned the value of visual weights using exotic woods in an undergrad sculpture class. I made a white plaster bust of my fiancee and needed a base for it. I had some black walnut, and thought great!, I’ll use this! So I cut the walnut into little blocks, glued them all together into a large block base for this white plaster head and put a nice varnish finish on the wood. Guess what? The base looked great! But the flashy grain, dark colored walnut, with the glossy finish had so much visual weight that you couldn’t take your eyes off it to see the white plaster head. The head was supposed to be the point after all, wasn’t it?

Visual weight is just one aspect of design. If you don’t consider it well it will overpower everything else.

Artists have learned a bag of tricks to grab your eyes, only one of which is visual weights. You know those black velvet Elvis paintings? Thought those were new in the 60’s. Fraid not. Dutch painters developed the technique in the 15th century for still life paintings because colors painted on a black background are visually more intense and saturated. Artists understood and used optical psychics long before Isaac Newton came along.

I’m suggesting, yes enjoy these visual elements used in our boats but they can be overused. Ask yourself how would this boat would look without this visual element. Does the design still look great or does it fall flat.

One of the most beautiful boats I’ve seen was at one of the WoodenBoat shows back in Newport, RI. in the early 90s.

There were all these great runabouts in mahogany and chrome and vast sailboats with teak and brass and then I saw this 30 foot open double ender sail boat. It was a fishing boat from Denmark, they just built and sailed her over for the show. It was all of a rough pine and nails, finished with oil with a linen sail. The shape, the proportions were truly marvelous! No gloss, no exotics, but right near the top of my list of the most inspiring boats I’ve seen. By the way, they said “oh yah, the oil finish is just for the show, she’ll be painted over when we get her home”.

Enjoy Phil’s boats. Our world would be a smaller place without them.

But I hope you will look further for inspiration.

All the best,

Rob Macks
Laughing Loon CC&K
www.LaughingLoon.com